There are so many ways to think about a circus. This kind of old-timey one came to town last night, the kind under a tent where everywhere you look there is a pole in the way, and it lets you think to yourself "this is so authentic, a real, grimy, shady circus. It is so cool that I am here."

And then you get close enough to the albino boa constrictor to see how his tail just kind of dangles there, how he is more of a heavily sedated tube of dead weight than an actual snake and you start to think that the PETA protesters at the gate probably had a point.

Every kid there bought one of these blue light sabers and every last one of them was really, really good at reenacting fight scenes from the newer, especially lame Star Wars franchise. I mean really good, honestly.

A woman ponders her $7 Polaroid of herself with a drugged-up boa constrictor hanging on her neck for dear life. $7 sounds like a lot for a Polaroid, but now that the film is not being made anymore, it is kind of a collectors' item in a way.

Oh, circuses. The clowns deserve so much credit because they're the real strong men that the whole things depend on, the way we hope that they are just funny enough to distract us from the tired and abused animals and people and how when, every time they drop a ball, we remember.